


you will hear thunder

by sannlykke



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, M/M, Small cameos by the rest of the GOM but it's really just these two dorks, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-01 23:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4038679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sannlykke/pseuds/sannlykke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...and remember me.</p><p>(a love song sung in rain and sleet and hail, and subsequent sunny days.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you will hear thunder

**Author's Note:**

> i don't care that this has been done to death already; it has been knocking around inside my head for far too long. (this is a gratuitous love story where everything is retold and nothing actually happens. a dash of canon divergence maybe, if that's the term people prefer.)
> 
> title is from anna akhmatova's poem; i do realize the context is different but, well. 
> 
> ~~yes, i am still working on everything else i'm writing, but i was also physically gone for two weeks and what can either of us do about that.~~
> 
> thanks @ hitoto yo for coming up on my youtube playlist while i was writing this. [kazaguruma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M0tgTuqZZI), for your reference.

He thought he knew, exactly, who he was, liquid gold and god-given. Indecision existed only as boredom, the realms of possibility never so far away that he paused and mulled over it. Though, a lie simmered underneath his skin, hot but never to the point of boiling, and he _wanted_ —

—what, exactly, was the question.

Laughter followed him almost on principle, a throng of silver bells that jingled and sang in his wake. Something to bask in for a little while, but then even that ceased to hold meaning. He never read much, at all really, but somewhere in the annals of time someone had proclaimed the phrase no pain, no gain. That would not have crossed his head at all again, but then a basketball happened to hit his pretty little head in the middle of the day. He turned around, and that was the other shoe dropping.

(Later, he would hear Midorima speaking incessantly of _fate_ , in his clinical, clipped but ultimately well-meaning sort of way, and secretly agree.)

“You’re that model Kise Ryouta, right?”

Several weeks later he was chasing after Aomine Daiki, yelling and crying over something that had ceased to lose meaning once the other had decided to let Kise follow him around the gym floor, practice be damned. They’d gotten absolutely punishing sets of workouts afterwards courtesy of Akashi, but _worth it_ was what ran through his mind for a split second, and he’d realized then just how little that came about.

(He should’ve seen it coming, honestly.)

On court nothing mattered but the rush of the air and the way they laughed and blew through the game, shoes squeaking and blood rushing. His fingertips were aflame and who can stop him now, his line of sight empty, but—there, on the other side, a blur of blue. Golden eyes watched the ball soar over his head and in one fluid motion fall into the basket, and that sound echoed in his ears forever. It was that spiraling grace that had drawn him in and challenged his every fibre, lending him wings, and Kise knew at that moment he would one day soar.

Aomine Daiki was a storm and there was nothing Kise wanted more.

 

 

Every person has a song to sing and his was this. A love song to the court, and to it only, the thump-a-thump of the ball, the thrum of flight when it arched through the air. Until one day.

Maybe—Aomine Daiki would tell himself later he hadn’t meant for it to happen, but the glimpse of gold that had caught his eye had taken his mind off basketball for the briefest of moments, and the ball had left his hand before he knew it.

“Hey, sorry about that—“

He wasn’t the sort of person to worry about apologies, or, anything really—to the chagrin of most who knew him dearly or not, but something like relief crept across his heart ever so quietly when he was met not with angry yelling but a face that had been plastered on every teenage magazine he’d had the misfortune to run across.

And what a face that was.

(Later, Tetsu would chide him for many things, culminating in _honestly, Aomine-kun, you’re so shallow_ , but it would be said with the hidden smile that he’d come a long way to know.)

Several weeks later he was being chased through the hallways with papers and books and screams spilling left and right behind him, weaving through the throngs of students whose faces had become nothing, and the pounding of footsteps behind kept him going. Satsuki’s exasperated calls melted into the background as a hand reached at his collar and pulled him back into reality, and the both of them tumbled down the steps into a heap at the disciplinarian’s feet.

Their team was a hodgepodge of personalities that was to be sure, calm Kuroko and distant Midorima and lazy Murasakibara and perfect Akashi, and himself, whatever that was, but _Kise_. It was not as if laughter had not existed before, but there was something about the blond’s voice that echoed up and down the court that drew him near. The way his eyes shone with determination even through the cascades of abuse that the rest of the team pelted him through those early days and more. How he changed and shifted and breezed by Aomine with that radiant glare.

(No matter how much Kise whined or cried and no matter how many times he fell down again he would get up and smile and say, _I’ll beat you next time_ , and he would feel the burning of want in his chest again.)

Kise Ryouta was the wind, and how Aomine wanted to catch him.

 

 

(But every story has its turns and twists and there is nothing less to be said of one with its dips and billows as tumultuous as the waves. 

And they floated for a while longer than they thought, drifting among the broken boards and barrels and various flotsam of memory. Here: the peak of the waves that crested too high and crashed along the shoreline, breaking into foam that cried out to the heavens above; the howling gale that parted the skies without care, madly disengaged, in the form of a thousand souls lost at sea.

There was a boy who stood at the lighthouse eons ago, calling name after name after name, but when, really, did they listen after all.)

 

 

From a children’s book, recall: a legend where there were once ten suns, each shining so brightly that the earth was scorched and laid to waste, and nothing would grow save the pile of bodies festering under their combined power. They are but half of ten, these miracles, but a warrior would come and shoot down each one after all.

Kise stays behind after that match that he did not expect, and for once in his life, thinks. He notices everything, and—he starts to want, and starts to remember, and everything fades away into a slow-burning flame at the sight of light and shadow — _Still. It was still there_. There needs only be one sun after all, to warm the earth after the storm.

(He can’t say he is surprised at the outcome when he goes to watch Seirin and Touou, and through it all his insides howled and fed the flames.)

And—of course, why wouldn’t it? Somewhere deep inside he already knew what would have become of them.

_I know you all too well._

Aomine does not regret even when he has to, but then came along some boy who had strayed into the path of a thrown basketball an eternity ago. His body aches as he’s won, but it too aches for something else entirely. 

In his wake he does not leave flowers, and perhaps that is all there is to know.

(But it isn’t, it isn’t, and he knows as soon as he steps out those doors he is done for, and even as the days pass into months and the summer beats down on his back he starts to recall a different sort of heat.)

He has Tetsu to thank, after all, for drawing him back in from the periphery of self-destruction, and that redheaded bastard who he reluctantly and internally agrees upon in those final moments of the fray. _Well then_ , Aomine mumbles to himself, and he looks into the departing crowd for another familiar face.

What use are condolences if—oh, to hell with it, Kise thinks later that night, much later, when he is looking out of his window at a dark form below. There is something sad in that smile and he wants to drink it whole, now that both of them have tasted the arrow. 

In the distance thunder rumbles and he realizes, _oh_ , it has always been there.

(If the wind could twist and turn and fumble, and murmur through the deep caresses of the clouds and coursing electricity—his fingers tighten, let go, tighten again.

The night lasts forever, and whatever tears in delight or despair could have watered an entire city.)

 

 

When he was younger, he used to play pinwheels with Satsuki—an alternative to both trawling through the mountains for bugs and pretend tea-time. There was always a song on the radio, _love is always waiting for us, spinning pinwheel_ ; she’d had asked him what he thought of it, and he’d laughed and shrugged.

Kise reads this in the book Aomine calls his autobiography, and asks him again.

“Hey, do you believe in fate?”

Across the table Kuroko makes a strange coughing noise, and Midorima launches into his usual tirade. Akashi and Momoi exchange looks over Murasakibara’s bowed head—too interested in his chips to listen—and wonder how any of them have managed to survive so far. But they are glad, the small drizzle of rain outside the cafe a soft pat-a-pat against the window. The aftermath of a dazzling hurricane that had swept all of them off their feet and then some.

Aomine doesn’t say anything and squeezes Kise’s hand under the table, turning away in some instinctive display of childishness. There would be time for more words later.

_I believe in the rainclouds and the wind, thunder rolling in the distant sky._

_Me too_ , Kise’s expression seems to say, and they go outside after. Best of three, Aomine tells him, and they go, flying, the eyes of the world a blur of color, subdued though not for long. The rain seeps into their hair and eyes, into the crevices of their skin and jerseys, clearing a pathway where only two may go.

The ball crashes onto the pavement; Kise catches it, and their gazes lock.

“Do you hear that, Aominecchi?”

_Behind that, always, there will be the sun._

**Author's Note:**

> [the legend of houyi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houyi) that was referred to at some point.


End file.
